WASHINGTON — There are many rumors surrounding Hurricane Helene. There are false claims that people who receive federal aid money can have their land confiscated. Or that $750 is the most they will ever get to rebuild. Or that the agency’s director – who had been on the ground since the storm – was beaten and hospitalized.
Because the US agency is charged with responding to disasters, the Federal Agency for Emergency Management has been fighting disinformation since Helene stormed into Florida nearly two weeks ago, wreaking havoc on her way north. The false claims are fueled by former President Donald Trump and others just before the presidential election, and they come as the agency prepares to respond to a second major disaster: Hurricane Milton will attack Florida on Wednesday.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters Tuesday that she has never seen the disinformation problem as severe as it was with Helene, which hit hard in North Carolina, a state key to winning the election.
“It’s absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” said an uninjured Criswell.
She said the online rumors are demoralizing for staff and volunteers who have left family behind to go to a disaster zone. And she said there is a real risk that local residents will hear these rumors and be too afraid to apply for the help they are entitled to.
Drew Reisinger, a Democratic registrar of deeds in Buncombe County, North Carolina, said part of the problem is that the affected regions have largely been without means of communicationso that outside voices can more easily determine the story.
“It’s almost easier for misinformation to happen when all our phone lines and internet lines have been down for so many days that we can’t refute it,” he said.
For days after Helene struck, his office was conducting welfare checks when relatives or friends reached out to say they had been unable to contact people in the area. The vast majority of people were fine. But at one point his office said it had conducted 15,000 welfare checks and that was wrongly interpreted as a sign that 15,000 people were missing.
He pushed back on the suggestion that relief supplies were not reaching people.
“Even in my office and the deeds office, we take so much stuff into every shout, and we notice that there is already so much food and water at every local Baptist church… at the Elks Club and at the homeless shelter” , he said.
U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican from North Carolina, issued a statement Tuesday debunking “outrageous rumors” that FEMA is blocking trucks from delivering supplies and halting bulldozing rescue efforts. the mountain town of Chimney Rockruns out of money more and more. FEMA has that too set up a website debunking conspiracy theories.
But others wondered where FEMA and other help has been. Pete Loftin and Crystal Pierce Clontz were chatting outside a donation center in Sunny View, North Carolina, on Monday. They compared notes on how many bars they could have gotten on their cell phone – not many. Loftin had spent two days trying to dig his way out of his damaged driveway, but wasn’t sure how to even apply for FEMA assistance.
“We all come together and take care of ourselves,” he said.
FEMA said this on Tuesday federal assistance for Helene survivorswho has killed 236 people in six stateshas reached $286 million. About half a million tarpaulins, 210 generators, more than 16 million meals and other supplies have also been sent to the affected areas.
This isn’t the first time rumors have emerged after a disaster, although experts say social media has given the phenomenon a boost. Criswell said they encountered similar problems in 2023 a huge forest fire in Maui.
During Helene, false claims circulated that residents would only receive $750 from FEMA and nothing more. That amount specifically covers one-off payments that people can receive for immediate needs, such as buying medicine or baby food. People can also apply for a variety of other types of assistance, such as money for rent while they are displaced or money to store their belongings while they repair their home.
The agency has also been falsely accused of confiscating donations intended for Helene and misrepresenting them deliveries to Ukraine. These are separate pots of money distributed by Congress.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has mapped out the misinformation and disinformation circulating in Helene’s wake. The London-based think tank, which tracks online hate, disinformation and extremism, said it had found 33 posts on Platform
After a disaster, there’s usually a period when residents work together to dig out and get supplies for strangers and friends alike, says Jeannette Sutton, an assistant professor at the University at Albany who studies how best to communicate with people during a disaster.
But at some point there is often a transition where that altruism is replaced by a sense of competition for resources. She worries about what misinformation could do to drive communities to compete even faster.
“You can imagine that if people from outside came in and stirred things up, that could help push people into a more corrosive environment,” she said.
It all comes as FEMA prepares for Hurricane Miltonwhich is set affected Florida’s Tampa region Wednesday. Agency officials have repeatedly said they can respond to multiple disasters at once — a message Criswell made clear Tuesday.
“FEMA has done this before. We manage complex incidents. We have handled several complex incidents,” she said.
Craig Fugate, who was FEMA administrator during the Obama administration and before that was Florida’s emergency management director, amplified that message.
He said the agency has historically been designed to respond to two major disasters at any time, as well as a number of medium to small disasters. They have tiers of personnel that can be deployed, ranging from reservists who are called to work in a disaster to headquarters staff who agree when they are hired to deploy if necessary.
The agency can bring in personnel focused on long-term disaster recovery to focus on what is immediately needed — such as Milton’s response — and can bring in other parts of the Department of Homeland Security as needed, Fugate said.
Criswell said the agency currently has enough money to respond to both Helene and Milton. But she did express concern that the agency could be in trouble around December or January if it doesn’t get more funding. In that case, they might have to withdraw from long-term recovery projects to save money for the next major disaster unless they get more funding from Congress.
Another agency that is critical to disaster recovery is raise the alarm that resources are running out. The Small Business Administration provides loans to uninsured or underinsured homeowners and to businesses to help them rebuild. President Joe Biden said inside a letter to Congress that aid could run out “in a matter of weeks” if more federal funding is not approved.
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Associated Press reporter Gabriela Aoun Angueira contributed from Sunny View, NC
